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Chapter 10: Picking up the Pieces
Ella Jean Gallagher rested the phone back on its receiver and went into the sunroom.
Red was seated on the sofa, absently stroking his grizzled jaw, ignoring the plate of pancakes she’d set front of him an hour ago.
She spoke sharply. “That was Hank, Red. Daisy’s just regained consciousness. The doctors told Daphne the worst has passed.”
Her husband nodded soberly. “He’ll never forgive me.”
That morning, Ella had watched the paramedics administer oxygen before loading Daisy’s collapsed form into the ambulance. She’d held her son as he clung to her, helping him bear his grief.
Hank had climbed in next to the stretcher, and then the doors were closed and locked. As she’d watched the ambulance pull away, Ella Jean decided she was good and done with bearing the havoc her husband wreaked.
She walked to her grandmother’s cherry side table and touched her quaking fingers to its smooth top, trying to steady herself. Pulling herself up to her full height of five foot-four, she looked straight at the husband she’d shared a bed with for thirty-three years.“If he does, you won’t deserve it.”
Angrily, Red turned to her, letting his eyes bore through her. Mouth twisted in a grimace, he swore. “That’s a helluva thing to say, Ella-Jean!”
“Well, I mean it,” she told him, eyes cold, voice shaking. “What did Buck Antelerone ever do to Frederick Henry Gallagher, that you and that crooked lawyer friend of yours concocted a scheme to steal his water rights? Was it that you wanted his land, too?”
Red’s eyes darted away quickly. His arthritic hand lifted the curtain, and he looked towards the barns, but he had no reply.
“I was afraid of that,” Ella said, her voice low and fierce. “For years, I haven’t been able to trust or respect you the way a wife should. Maybe I’ve just been hiding from it all along. Maybe I’ve known you were an underhanded thief, Red, I’ve just been too scared to let myself think it, so I let all this time pass, instead.”
Red was surly. “Hell, Ella-Jean, didn’t know you felt that way! Why not say something sooner? All these years, I thought I was taking care of you and the boy!”
Ella-Jean pressed her lips together. “Red Gallagher, taking water from a man who was entitled to it had nothing to do with Hank or me. You were mad we lost Ryan, and you took it out on Buck. I had a bad feeling when you started in on him, and it just kept getting worse. Buck was the nearest you had to a real friend, and all you did was punish him for it.” There was unmasked horror in her voice. “You know the heartache you’ve caused? Those girls lost their water, their land, then their Momma and Daddy, but you’re still not satisfied, so you go after Daisy while she’s here as our son’s guest?”
The unspeakable anger of ten years duration drove her on. “Now, I’m going into your office, and I’m locking the door, and I’m going to look until I find the key to that safe deposit box you have in there, holding all of your secrets. Then I’m gonna call over to Beeville, and get a lawyer to go back into the old courthouse records and pull the exact deed my grandparents signed. I want to see the original, not the doctored copy I’ll find in that safe, Red. It’ll spell out the water rights to this place and Buck’s place, too. I have a feeling that lawyer Buck Antelerone hired was happy enough to take his money, but sure didn’t spend the time he should have digging around to find the facts. And just so you know, I’m gonna load my daddy’s revolver and keep it in on the desk with me, so don’t be putting up any kind of fuss, do you hear me?”
Red’s face crumpled. By the time Ella left the room, his head was in his hands.
While she’d been whipping the eggs and milk up for his pancakes, she’d decided to ship Red off to Corpus Christi and hire a private nurse to tend him there, just as Hank suggested. She’d get the break she needed, and no one would have to worry about Frederick Henry Gallagher’s callous comments and underhanded behavior anymore.
After what she’d been through the past months trying to work through the estate details with Red, it would bring her some peace to know Hank had full rein to run things his way. He was a grown man now, competent and kind.
He could easily take over for his daddy, so she’d see to it that everything known as Gallagher Ranch was in Hank’s name by the middle of next week.
She’d make certain Daisy and Daphne Antelerone were taken care of, too. Her son might have a hard time forgiving himself for what had happened to Daisy, but if Daisy stayed with him, it would be because she wanted to be with him, not because she needed to be with him.
They both deserved that.
**********
Hank navigated the wash a week and a half later, and dropped into Hobble Creek Ranch. Once in front of the house, he cut the truck’s engine. Daphne was on the porch, face tense.
When he got there, she kissed his cheek. Taking his hand, she swung the screen door open and silently led him through the front room and down the hall.
Inhaling sharply, he knocked on the half-open door to the familiar sunny bedroom.“Hey,” Daisy called.
The lacy curtains still filtered light into dancing patterns on the floor, but the girl on the bed didn’t look like Daisy anymore; there was nothing fierce and tawny about her now. Beneath her sunken olive cat eyes were dark circles, and her jaw and cheekbones were still bruised. She still wore a little cap on her head, as she had for almost two weeks now. Shifting in bed, she gasped with pain.
Instantly, he was next to her, hands outstretched. “Daize, what is it, what can I do?”
She winced, brow furrowed. Then the pain passed, and she shook her head. “It’s nothing. I’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Hank, it’s fine. I saw the doctor yesterday, and I have to go again tomorrow.”
